Corporate Immigration Compliance
About a decade ago, Canadian temporary foreign worker program has had significant impact due to suspicious activities and fraud detections around the program leading to enforcement of Canadian employer compliance. The goal being the protection of Canada’s labor market and furnishing Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) the legal means to enforce, educate and ban non-complaint employers. The changes have altered expectations, raised many interesting legal issues and presented new challenges for employers and lawyers. Much of the criticism directed to the evolving compliance regime is related to the legal scope of the enforcement measures as well as predictability and transparency in Labor Market Impact Assessments (LMIA – previously Labor Market Opinions (LMOs)) and compliance.
Since then, the Canadian Government started legal means to review employer compliance. To accomplish this, the government started an Employer Compliance Review (ECR) program under Ministerial Instruction and an inspection. Under ECR, a Canadian employer must demonstrate compliance with the inspected conditions and is triggered as part of an LMIA application process. The purpose of an ECR is to authorize ESDC to perform a full compliance review of all formerly issued positive LMIA or LMO decisions for an employer. If employers are found non-compliant at the end of an ECR review, they could heavy consequences including but not limited to:
- A ban of two years from the TFWP
- A negative LMIA issued for any pending applications
- Revocation of previously-issued LMIAs
If you have questions or simply not sure what options are available, you should get in touch with our office. We’ll be able to find out your best possible options and how we can help.
Contact us for exploring your best possible options and/or solutions.